A cover of Imagine, the hit John Lennon song, was given by David Bowie just a few years after The Beatles member was killed.
Bowie, the artist behind hits like Life on Mars, Moonage Daydream, and You Feel So Lonely You Could Die, delivered a cover of Lennon’s Imagine at a gig in Hong Kong. The veteran of studio and stage shared what Lennon thought of his music before delivering the performance. After performing Fame, the song he co-wrote with Lennon for his Young Americans album, Bowie explained the ex-Beatle member enjoyed the glam-rock style, but had one criticism. Bowie shared: “I co-wrote that song with John Lennon. I asked John one day ‘how do you write your songs?’ He said, ‘It’s easy, you just say what you mean and you put a backbeat to it.’
“I said, ‘What do you think of my kind of rock and roll?’ He said, ‘It’s great, but it’s just rock and roll with lipstick on.'” Bowie then recalled the last time he saw Lennon, before breaking into a cover of one of the best-known songs from his solo career.
Bowie added: “Last time I saw John Lennon was in Hong Kong. We went to a Hong Kong market and there was a stall that sold old clothes and there was a Beatles jacket on the stall, and I did something that’s not usually in my character.
“I asked him to put it on so that I could take a photograph, and I took a photograph, and I’ve still got the photograph, the jacket doesn’t fit properly, and it looks like John had outgrown it.” The Let’s Dance hitmaker went on to explain why he was going to perform Imagine to the audience, with his concert falling on the same day as Lennon’s death.
He said: “On this day, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York apartment.” What follows is an extraordinary cover of Imagine, with Bowie backed by saxophones. Viewers were stunned by the performance, with many calling it one of the finest moments in Bowie’s stage career.
One YouTube comment reads: “From one king of Rock ‘n’ Roll to another, Bowie’s admirable tribute to John. Wonderful and surprising show. Bowie, your tears are our tears for the two geniuses of music. Bowie and Lennon forever in our hearts.”
Another wrote: “Watching this absolutely destroyed me. David looks absolutely devastated, and seeing him generally sad is heartbreaking. I think John’s death affected him a lot more than he let on. They were really, really good friends and seeing David teary and looking up for John killed me.”
Bowie would later call Lennon one of the “brightest, quickest witted, earnestly socialist men” he had met. He said: “He was probably one of the brightest, quickest witted, earnestly socialist men I’ve ever met in my life. Socialist in its true definition, not in a fabricated political sense, a real humanist.” You can watch Bowie’s cover of Imagine below.
